Short Story #48: Assignment

Let me tell something about procrastination. It can be either really fun or really burdensome. It can be really fun when your task got cancelled or postponed last minute. However, it can be really burdensome when the deadline is just the next day and you have not started a single thing on your assignment just hours before its submission date!

Today, it is the latter.

It was when I was playing Game of Life with my family that it suddenly struck me that I had yet to complete my dissertation paper for my English class. A dissertation paper that was supposed to take 3 weeks to conduct thorough research and another 1 week to collate all the relevant arguments tweaked by my own personal voice. At that moment of realization, I just wanted to bang my head onto the game board and I kept casting uneasy glances between the clock and game, silently begging for the game to wrap up quickly. As soon as my character successfully reached the end, I let out an excited cry and hauled myself to my feet, racing to my own room and closing the door.

With 5 hours left to its deadline, I hurried to complete my assignment with additional effort to show that I had taken weeks to perfect my dissertation. At first, I thought I was the only one rushing to do this burdensome work but it turned out two of my other friends were too. I was definitely relieved that I was not alone, but that did not make the urgency to finish the work suddenly disappear into thin air. Far from that, I still had to work my butt off, even sacrificing precious sleep. Well, it was all my fault that I procrastinated in the first place. And, no matter how matter times I told myself to start doing every assignment early, I still ignore that same mistake and procrastinate. It was horrible!

Unfortunately, even after burning the midnight oil, I still have only completed half of the assignment. Before I knew it, the next day had arrived and I had to prepare for school. I had never showered and changed clothes so fast in my life! My situation became worse when I had to bring my laptop along to school to finish the remainder of the task and even print in school. Such was my life.

Once I arrived in school, just less than an hour before the deadline, my heart was pounding so loudly that I could hardly concentrate. However, my mind went totally blank, making my sleep-deprived brain unable to function. I let out a resigned sigh. I had to face the music eventually.

As I turned up for class and waited for it to start, I could not bring myself to resume my work. I just had to turn in that incomplete and half-hearted work. I was miserable. However, when my professor turned up, she suddenly announced that she would be extending the deadline since the entire class was not even close to completing it. Everyone let out a very loud relieved sigh but mine was probably the loudest that everyone, including the teacher were staring at me.

It was a miracle that this procrastination turned out to be really fun. Indeed it was a miracle.

-

Also, I would going for three-day vacation tomorrow so I would not be publishing any short stories for a while but I'll be writing it out in my notebook. I'll not miss a day which is an opportunity to organize my thoughts and write!